DIY Speakers tailored for small room

[Svarog98]

I want to build some DIY speakers for my small room:

(front view to listening position)

(top view of room - the black squares are subs. one under the platform and one on the shelf )

Im currently using Revel M16 paired with 2 subs (Yamaha YST SW-160) powered by a Lyngdorf 1120 with its fantastic DSP and the sound is pretty decent.
I want to push things much further even though neither the listening position nor the room is ideal. Since i only need 1 small sweet spot i think its ok to try.
I was thinking of corner horns or a 8" full range coaxial carefully build and placed and building 4 small subs to handle everything below 100hz.

I was recently tinkering with room treatment (rock wool) and i think absorbing the window behind the listening position enhances the sound quite a lot. that is not the same with side wall absorption
leaving the corners free resulting in lateral reflections was to my enjoyment. using wooden slab walls with absorption behind to further increase deflection and curtains on the windows would be a good mix, but is going to result in an unsymmetrical positioning (which the dsp cans handle at least a bit).

My goal is to get the best sound possible for this location and incorporate the room instead making it sound like a glorified headphone.
Any thoughts?

Measurements of the room/system will be added later.

 

[kemmler3D]

For this space I think horns could be really interesting, since you can integrate them with the walls more intentionally if you get the angle right. I don't know that much about horns and designing them, but it seems interesting to me.

If you are looking for more room interaction and not less, I might not go for the coaxial since they tend to have ragged off-axis response in the treble.

 

[Phorize]

Would these fit?

Pi Speakers - seven Pi constant directivity cornerhorn performance data

High-quality, high-efficiency loudspeakers with uniform directivity have been the Pi Speakers mainstay since 1980. From the constant directivity cornerhorns to the matched-directivity two-way speakers, Pi Speakers is the leader in the audiophile market.

www.pispeakers.com

 

[Svarog98]

i am very interested in this PI speakers so the direction seems to go towards horns. I hope i can build proper ones - they seem to be a much more harder to do. But my woodworking skills are not bad (at least what people tell me )

 

[olieb]

Have you thought about turning the arrangement around?
Speakers besides the window and a very open space behind the listener?
This would avoid the strain early reflections from behind the listening position.

 

[JohnBooty]

IMO/IME: The worse your room is acoustically, and the worse your listening position is, the more you need speakers with well controlled dispersion.... like the Revels.

I'm a DIY fan myself, but would be very very shocked if it was possible to beat the Revels in terms of dispersion. But maybe your goal is not absolute sound quality.... maybe you are trying to free up space.

By the way. Your room looks really cool. It looks like you truly maximized a small space. Looks like the woodworking skills came in handy, maybe.

I think the number thing you can do is to put some thick blackout curtains in front of that window. If they are thick enough to block light they will be pretty decent high frequency absorbers/diffusers IME. I would probably have two curtain rods. One with light normal curtains (so you can have privacy but let light in) and one for blackout curtains (for privacy and sound absorption)

 

[Svarog98]

Have you thought about turning the arrangement around?
Speakers besides the window and a very open space behind the listener?

unfortunately not possible, i have a projector facing the same direction, but i have to admit: i tried one and it sounded a bit better

 

[Svarog98]

IMO/IME: The worse your room is acoustically, and the worse your listening position is, the more you need speakers with well controlled dispersion.... like the Revels.

I'm a DIY fan myself, but would be very very shocked if it was possible to beat the Revels in terms of dispersion. But maybe your goal is not absolute sound quality.... maybe you are trying to free up space.

By the way. Your room looks really cool. It looks like you truly maximized a small space. Looks like the woodworking skills came in handy, maybe.

my goal is to have the best sound possible and i think that's mostly possible if one build devices that are perfectly made for the circumstances. Unfortunately one needs a ton of knowledge to build proper speakers than lets say a table...
thanks for the compliment, i really love my space
edit: the PI Horns should have controlled directivity too

 

[olieb]

unfortunately not possible, i have a projector facing the same direction, but i have to admit: i tried one and it sounded a bit better

I would turn the projector around too and project onto a screen that can be pulled down in front of the window. But that's me. I am not so much into video anyways.

 

[JohnBooty]

I guess instead of wide and controlled dispersion.... maybe you could try electrostats, or something else with ultra-narrow dispersion, and aim them directly at the listening position. Remove the room from the equation entirely!

Although, if you can DIY electrostats, you are quite the wizard lol

that's mostly possible if one build devices that are perfectly made for the circumstances.

The sound that reaches your ears is mostly reflected. You are hearing direct sound plus the sum of all reflections. You could tune the speaker's frequency response "in hardware" via the crossover, but this isn't sonically superior to DSP correction.

Besides that, you can remove the room from the equation as much as possible. But unless you have seriously huge absorbers this will affect mainly high frequencies. Or you can try ultra narrow dispersion speakers as mentioned above.

 

[digitalfrost]

I have built quite a few speakers in the past. Most were with fullrange chassis, including multiple horns. A few thoughts:

- The Revel M16 that you have is already a very good speaker. It will be hard to built something better, especially if you want to go the fullrange/horn route. Even surpassing them with a quality 2 way will not be easy.

- Horns are a space inefficent and elaborate way to try and extract some bass from chassis that were not made for it.

- If you don't have a lot of space I would not build horns, especially if you plan to use subwoofers anyway

- 8" fullranges have a very narrow sweet spot, like you can barely move your head at all to have all the high frequencies at your ears. 3" fullranges can do bass, just not very loud. I would choose something in the middle like a 5-6" fullrange.

Don't get me wrong I like horns, I like fullranges, they're fun to build and fun to listen to - but if you're after quality sound that is not the way the go. Especially combining subwoofers with horns seems redundant to me.

 

[DVDdoug]

Especially combining subwoofers with horns seems redundant to me.

Horns don't work at low frequencies unless they are HUGE (because of the wavelengths).

 

[Svarog98]

If the Revels suit this space then room treatment should be the next step to consider, right?

for the subwoofers:
this is my latest measurement with var smoothing the boosted bass is on purpose but the graph is really ugly (huge 40hz + 150hz dip)
i was considering a swarm sub approach with 4 subs. You guys have some better ideas?

And without smoothing:

i can attach the mdat if someone can explain to me how

 

[digitalfrost]

Horns don't work at low frequencies unless they are HUGE (because of the wavelengths).

Yes, but most horns will indeed go down to 50-60hz. Why put in all the effort if you're gonna cross them at 80hz anyway?

If the Revels suit this space then room treatment should be the next step to consider, right?

Have you considered any kind of digital room correction yet? Are you using DSP? What are your sources? If you have a PC as only source and can already measure, you can have DSP correction for free. Ah I see you're using Lyngdorf RoomPerfect.

You can attach the mdat by replying here and clicking "Attach files" in the window.

 

[ppataki]

else with ultra-narrow dispersion, and aim them directly at the listening position. Remove the room from the equation entirely!

A nice big full range driver would fit those criteria too
I have had many of those, super-narrow dispersion, hence extremely few reflections in the room
But of course you will need tons of DSP to tame their response
But then they will sound mind-blowing!

 

[Svarog98]

I never listened to speakers with super-narrow dispersion and I doubt that I will like it

 

[ppataki]

Yes, it is a love or hate relationship
I totally got hooked on them like 3-4 years ago

 

[jhaider]

I never listened to speakers with super-narrow dispersion and I doubt that I will like it

I would look into some of the designs by @Duke.

His signature of late is a narrow dispersion front firing speaker augmented by an up/back firing component to provide more spaciously.

 

[Salt]

Full range with transmission line
or
full range with integrated (sub) bass

There's a wide range from 3" to 6.5", and increasing diameter increases beaming (and mostly max. SPL)

 

[Svarog98]

Full range with transmission line
or
full range with integrated (sub) bass

There's a wide range from 3" to 6.5", and increasing diameter increases beaming (and mostly max. SPL)

What are the downsides of bigger diameters?